Trying before buying

The music industry really needs to realize that if they don’t start letting people try before they buy, give a little to get a lot back, people are just going to start taking. Case in point, everyone’s favorite topic: file-sharing. Now, some companies have tried to appease the file-sharing masses somewhat by offering music through services like iTunes, but that model relies on the idea that a) customers want to buy songs one at a time or b) customers want to buy albums, but without having to buy the physical media.

However, as much of a technocrat as I might be, I do see the value in physical media. With physical media, you get liner notes, album cover art, and preservation of presentation– the artist usually chooses a particular order in which songs appear on the album and there’s a reason for that. It will be a long time before all of these things become useless to the public (perhaps never) AND it will be a long time before the entire music buying public jumps onto the digital music bandwagon. The music industry needs to embrace digital music, file-sharing and everything they have to offer, but it also needs to come up with a workable hybrid model that marries the benefits of both the digital music world and the hard media world.

I’m not so arrogant to believe that I’m the only one who ever came up with this very general, non-constructive suggestion, but I was once again reminded of this challenge as I was listening to music in my car via my trusty iPod. To be honest, I only buy CDs when I KNOW I am going to like almost all of the songs on an album AND I have some type of long-term interest in the artist. So, even if I liked all the songs on the newest pop star’s album, I wouldn’t buy it unless I believed that the artist looked like s/he would a) make it past the latest episode of MTV’s TRL and b) I would keep listening and enjoying his/her music when s/he does. Unfortunately, this leaves me with owning and buying CDs by a very small number of artists that I started listening to before the digital music explosion and that luckily, I was able to discover, try out and come to love. It also leaves me with a few random CDs from artists that never made it past their first or second album or that I couldn’t stand to listen to after their first or second album.

Today, I add artists to that privileged list for which I actually buy CDs by trying before buying. Unfortunately, online music stores rarely offer more than very short clips of a few songs on a particular CD and I don’t have the time to sit there in the brick-and-mortar music store and listen to the whole CD (if I were lucky enough for the CD I want to buy to be in the listening kiosk). In fact, even if I did have the time, listening to just one CD isn’t enough, which is why I have random CDs lying around in my collection (which I will refrain from naming here). I want to listen to many CDs, listen to a “Best of” type compilation of a particular artist before I decide whether I’m going to sign on as a member of his fan club and start doling out my hard-earned money on some music, digital or otherwise.

Realistically, given today’s music sales model, the only way to really do this (without spending money) is a) listen to your friend’s CDs or b) download some digital music. The music industry needs to admit that trying before buying, not free music for everyone, is the model they are being pushed towards and the sooner they realize that and stop trying to punish their customers for pushing them, the sooner everyone will stop villifying them. The music industry should take a tip from drug dealers. If the music industry would just come through on the trying part, the public will come through on the buying part, but not before then.

Addendum: all of the above also holds true for the television industry. If I wanted to start watching a television show that had already been on for several seasons, I would want to catch up with all the previous seasons’ episodes. Considering the painfully slow speed with which television shows are, if ever, released on DVD or video, downloading them online is an increasingly popular option. However, if I’m not allowed to download them online (perhaps because of anti-copying locks on television broadcasts), I frankly will be less likely to start watching a show other than from the beginning. The television industry needs to come up with a new ad/commercial model to make television-on-demand a viable option because at it’s core, it’s a try before you buy model.

Exit row guilt

What you feel when you’re sitting in your roomy exit row seat and you watch the other passengers tiredly waiting in the aisle to get back to their cramped, not-so-roomy regular seats. This is only magnified by the fact that I am a small person that doesn’t really need that much leg room. I just wanted to tell all those people looking at me, “This is just the luck of the draw! And I had to sit in a middle seat in the back on the way to Newark from San Francisco! I have suffered too!”

On the road

I loved the movie The American President, so I don’t know quite why it took me so long to start watching The West Wing. But I’ve started and am catching up on all four seasons before this current one. And I’ve got to say, I love it. I can’t get enough. It’s one of the few shows, if not the only one that I can watch countless episodes back to back and never get tired of it. That’s the case for a lot of reasons, including a great cast, intelligent and witty dialogue, and compelling storylines. Yet, as I find myself three-quarters through the second season, I realize that one of the greatest reasons for enjoying the show is that the ideals the Bartlett administration works for resonate with me and it makes me feel good to see people, particularly politicians working to achieve those ideals. And of course, it’s a television show, a sugar-coated, dramatized version of how things really work, how things really happen, but I can’t help feeling like I wish I could be part of something like that.

And then I realize I guess I am. Despite all my frustration with work these past few months, with RPC hell and interdepartmental bureaucracy, working at a university and specifically at Stanford is extremely rewarding. In the beginning, I took the job with Residential Computing because in the face of a rapidly failing economy and tough job market, the university was offering a relatively interesting software development job with good pay and benefits. Then, after holding the position for a while, I was rewarded with the feeling of accomplishment and independence– I run my own software development program with relative autonomy and I got a lot done in my first year. But as I got the hang of the software development part, I became more involved in the staff part– being part of a staff that serves almost all students at the university and thanks to the people who work with me, serve them not only as a computing resource, but as advocates.

Technology pervades our lives more and more each day and today, it is what tests our social, political, economic and moral values. Today, and into the future, technology is deeply political and brings to the surface much deeper, much more essential issues. It’s similar to the AIDS epidemic– when we look at the problem of HIV and AIDS, we’re not just dealing with a medical problem. We’re dealing with a social problem, a political problem and an economic problem. There’s a reason why people of color, women, poor people– the same people often fall into these three categories– are suffering the most from the AIDS epidemic. When we look at the problem of AIDS, we would be remiss not to look at the problems of poverty, discrimination, and education. In the same way, talking about technology, working in technology is not just about building faster computers or getting everybody onto the Internet. It’s about looking at how technology can not only help our lives, but how it shapes our lives and ideals and what the way we use a technology or what technologies we pursue says about us as people.

My job isn’t just about writing code or building tools to help run the network better. It’s about building tools to faciliate and shape the educational process. It’s about being part of a staff that helps shape important policies regarding not just technology use, but student rights. The undergraduate experience at Stanford, partially thanks to the Residential Education model, is a truly engrossing experience and aims to provide learning opportunities not just in the classroom, but during your entire time at school and in all areas of your life while at school. And because technology is such an integral part of young people’s lives today, helping them learn how to use it more effectively, providing them with all the technology tools possible, and helping to influence University policy to ensure students are free to thrive in an open and encouraging environment is an extremely important and rewarding job. My college years are not so far in the past and being naturally inquisitive and having a thirst for learning as most Stanford students are and do, I remember how good it felt like, still feels like to be at a place like Stanford that is open and filled with rich resources of both technology and people to help me explore and learn.

Sometimes it’s frustrating and sometimes it feels like, as my friend put it, that I’m trying to drive a Jaguar on a go-cart track, but at least I’m on the road.